|
Checking the back cover, Free Enterprise + Elves/Leprechauns was published in 1990, so for all of its faults, at least Harry Potter-chasing isn't one of them. ElfQuest, maybe?
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 01:21 |
|
|
# ? May 9, 2024 09:03 |
|
Darthemed posted:Checking the back cover, Free Enterprise + Elves/Leprechauns was published in 1990, so for all of its faults, at least Harry Potter-chasing isn't one of them. ElfQuest, maybe? The 80s fostered a lot of stupid punny sci-fi. I can't believe I ever read anything by Spider Robinson and actually enjoyed it.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 02:51 |
|
queserasera posted:The 80s fostered a lot of stupid punny sci-fi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callahan's_Crosstime_Saloon Puns and hamfisted political soapboxing in a setting just whimsical enough to take the edge off of it is the worst.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 04:09 |
|
queserasera posted:The 80s fostered a lot of stupid punny sci-fi. I can't believe I ever read anything by Spider Robinson and actually enjoyed it. Mike Nelson's Death Rat!, by Michael J. Nelson (2003) Purchased at a time before I started finding Mike Nelson (of MST3k) dull and kind of obnoxious, this novel tells the story of a Minnesotan trying to write a book about a big rat. From what I remember (which honestly isn't much, though I do recall it being a struggle to get through at the time), the book is poorly-paced, filled out with dull side-stories (like a discussion of what people call chicken thighs when served on their own), characters that read like cut-rate and intentionally inoffensive Hiaasen imitations, and an unengaging premise carried by a protagonist that had weird flexes of character to bend him into something that could get the next section going. There's also some unfavorable comparisons to be made to Prairie Home Companion in the amount of detail for its own sake, though it's done in an even more self-conscious manner, making most of the humor land fairly flat. Sure, a lot of that is subjective and half-remembered (and at the time, I was probably soured that it didn't have the quick humor of MST3k), but thumbing through it now, I feel OK in that assessment. It's not really a terrible book, but one that I am embarrassed to have purchased. Back-side summary: Mike Nelson's Death Rat! posted:What if an aging, unsuccessful Minnesota author of history books with names like Old von Steuben Had a Farm: The German-American Settlement of the Midwest decided he could write a book every bit as vapid and ridiculous as the books that sold four hundred times more copies than his own? Well, he would write Death Rat, of course, the thrilling tale of a man who battles prejudice, his inner demons, and a cunning six-foot-long rat. A few excerpts: Mike Nelson's Death Rat! posted:Given his advancing age and his current stature in the business community, Pontius Feeb knew that it was unseemly for him to be driving giddily through town at mid-day, whistling and thinking fondly of spit-roasted chicken and buttered fingerling potatoes. Mike Nelson's Death Rat! posted:Bromstad, the honored guest of PederCo—a local hospitality conglomerate with substantial travel agency, hotel, and restaurant holdings—and its owner, Darlene Pedersen, stood in her moderately luxurious skybox picking through a pile of steaming chicken wings. Mike Nelson's Death Rat! posted:Gus Bromstad was in a hurry to use his new FlameMaster convection oven and did not read the label. He glanced at it only briefly before cooking his enchiladas, ignoring everything but the suggested oven temperature. He did not even wait long enough for the oven to preheat, and this gave the naturally occurring bacteria an even more conducive environment in which to grow. It was, in fact, not he who had thawed the Mrs. Condresi's Crab Enchiladas in the refrigerator; it was his buying service. But that was of no help to Gus Bromstad on this particular night. Mike Nelson's Death Rat! posted:"Um, thank you," he said. "We, my friend Jack Ryback and I, are here to ask a favor of you, the town of Holey. We—" Ponty was thrown suddenly when the appearance of a man in the front row caught his eye: He was wearing jeans, soiled work boots, and an extraordinarily dirty and frayed baseball cap. But it was the slogan on his black T-shirt that most arrested Ponty's attention, and he took the time to read it. It read BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEER HOLDER and featured a cartoon drawing of a google-eyed man, gargantuan tongue hanging from a snaggletoothed mouth, looking lovingly at a stein of foamy beer. Ponty was amazed that this was the outfit he had chosen for a Sunday-morning meeting, and by the time he had finished reading the shirt and being amazed, he had completely taxed the slim reserves of patience the crowd had for him. Mike Nelson's Death Rat! posted:"Gerry has an earth home," Ponty informed the others. Mike Nelson's Death Rat! posted:Much like Mr. Spock playing a difficult tridimensional chess match against an intellectually lively opponent[...] Darthemed has a new favorite as of 23:04 on Jun 9, 2016 |
# ? Jun 9, 2016 04:20 |
|
Pontius Feeb is one of the worst "funny" names I've read in a long time. Hot drat.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 04:25 |
|
Why does this leprechaun have a book for a penis?
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 06:11 |
|
House Louse posted:Why does this leprechaun have a book for a penis? Don't kinkshame.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 06:36 |
|
Darthemed posted:It's not really a terrible book, but one that I am embarrassed to have purchased. I haven't read it but those excerpts make me confident that it is, in fact, a loving awful book. I mean, christ: quote:Mike Nelson's Death Rat! posted: Are you kidding me? This is utterly wretched. NLJP has a new favorite as of 08:45 on Jun 9, 2016 |
# ? Jun 9, 2016 08:03 |
|
Yikes. Mike Nelson is a very funny man, but he's funny in a way that just doesn't lend itself to fiction writing.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 10:04 |
|
Darthemed posted:Honorable mention goes to The Book of Words, Volume I: The Baker's Boy, by J.V. Jones. Darkhold has a new favorite as of 11:57 on Jun 9, 2016 |
# ? Jun 9, 2016 11:52 |
|
Prenton posted:I likes how the solution to the intriguing technical mystery of Airframe was DON'T TRUST THE CHINESE Jonathan Yeah! posted:Rising Sun was the blah blah blah Japanese corporations taking over America, wasn't it? Still better than Airframe.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 12:26 |
|
ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Yikes. Mike Nelson is a very funny man, but he's funny in a way that just doesn't lend itself to fiction writing. It's been forever since I read it but I remember liking his book of essays he did.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 12:42 |
|
Mycroft Holmes posted:Don't kinkshame. Your hardback fetish is absolutely terrible.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 13:10 |
|
"Death Rat!" sounds like something the MST3K character Mike would come up with, ashamed but secretly convinced at his brilliance; the bots would discover his hidden manuscript, embarrass Mike by reading it aloud, and roundly mock it between Movie Signs.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 13:44 |
|
The main thrust of the book, as I remember, was more about how authors tend to be viewed as a brand to sell, more than the books themselves. The author of the titular "Death Rat" is actually replaced on the jackets and press tours by a younger and handsomer man as a means of selling more copies. There's also a kind of Tom Clancy knock off in the book who's very protective of his look of wool sweaters and fishing hats.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 13:50 |
|
Cracking into some (kind of) licensed stuff today, with this trilogy. Lucasfilm's Alien Chronicles, by Deborah Chester (1998-1999) In between pumping out Star Wars EU books and crushingly boring EU for Willow, Lucasfilm found reason to release this trilogy in rapid succession (though they didn't even bother with the sparkly embossing for the third one. Thematic reasons, so as to tie into the decline of the alien empire, or due to lack of reader/publisher interest? Your call.). Pretty much a traditional gladiator story as it would be told in a fantasy setting, but translated into sci-fi, with aliens of the 'all members of this species have these personality characteristics' type (cruel reptilians, submissive dog-likes, Jawa-types, etc.). Oh, and also, at least some of these species can somehow interbreed. The main plot is that a female member of the feline race, who serves as the protagonist, is kept as a pet by the reptilian princess before being cast out to survive by her wits, at which point she becomes a well-regarded gladiatorial fighter, eventually leading a rebellion against the reptilian empire of oppressors. Take the editing skill of the average Star Wars EU book and apply it to a fairly simple story stretched out to ~1200 pages with a glazing of sci-fi (along the lines of 'let's call a knife a slicer' and colonialism directly applied to interplanetary rule), and a predictable ending telegraphed by the broad characterizations. While the writing doesn't touch the level of terrible that's been shown by other stuff in this thread, it's amazingly tedious, weighed down by sci-fi euphemisms, a juvenile sense of political intrigue, and awkward world-building (for example, quality A of creature C, already known to all the involved characters, will come into play in a future plan, so let's have the characters say "It is well-known that creature C has quality A," to each other). I really don't know how I got through these as a kid, but I will give it credit for being the first place I encountered the word 'cartouche'. A few excerpts (all taken from The Crystal Eye, because if I still have the other two, they're boxed up somewhere): The Crystal Eye posted:"Oh!" Velia said, cradling them happily in her arms. "I have some chuffie roots that Tantha found this morning, and there are still a few greens. If I use the last of the pefrike for seasoning, and boil these until they can be mashed, I can—" The Crystal Eye posted:"Rumors are beginning to circulate that the Imperial Mother's eggs are weak, making her unable to produce an imperial heir." The Crystal Eye posted:Elrabin slapped his arms against his sides. He felt spent, like he'd talked too much. "Enough speech-making," he said finally. The Crystal Eye posted:She turned to the chancellor, who handed her a holo-cube.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 19:58 |
|
Is "Deborah Chester" a pseudonym for Kevin J. Anderson?
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 23:42 |
|
Oh god, I read all of those, and owned at least the first one. I liked at least the first one at the time, though I was a teenager with an even worse sense of good taste than I have now.
|
# ? Jun 9, 2016 23:46 |
|
The Master: A Novel of the Sons of Destiny by Jean Johnson. I picked it up on clearance at Borders ages ago for a couple of bucks because it looked hilarious and it was. In the opening scene our sexy hero is literally lying in his own poo poo. There's also a scene where the protagonist spits his semen out because it tasted bad, and then magicked it away out of her palm so as to not hurt his feelings. But he saw it and his feelings were hurt. Also a significant time was spent going on about the exciting things that had already happened in the other books. Anyway, I'm surprised at the good reviews.
|
# ? Jun 11, 2016 04:28 |
|
Athyra by Steven Brust. There has to be a law against writing a book this boring. Normally it freshens up a series when you write an instalment from a different perspective, but not here. We go from inside the head of a witty assassin to being stuck with in the shoes of a boring farmboy. He has no arc, no personality, and he ends up brain-damaged at the end, which is scarcely a change. The book is 200 pages but there's not enough plot to fill it. It even threatens to be vaguely interesting by having a previously dead-guy from another book show up to be the antagonist, but this has no bearing on the story whatsoever. And the climax takes place in the dark, sparing the author of having to write anything that could be mistaken for excitement.
|
# ? Jun 12, 2016 09:47 |
|
Inspector Gesicht posted:Athyra by Steven Brust. There has to be a law against writing a book this boring. Normally it freshens up a series when you write an instalment from a different perspective, but not here. We go from inside the head of a witty assassin to being stuck with in the shoes of a boring farmboy. He has no arc, no personality, and he ends up brain-damaged at the end, which is scarcely a change. The book is 200 pages but there's not enough plot to fill it. It even threatens to be vaguely interesting by having a previously dead-guy from another book show up to be the antagonist, but this has no bearing on the story whatsoever. And the climax takes place in the dark, sparing the author of having to write anything that could be mistaken for excitement. This book was so weird to read. I loved his other books, but I remember absolutely nothing about this book except that I didn't like any of the new characters. The whole appeal of his books is the witty banter between Vlad and Loiosh, why would he switch to third person?
|
# ? Jun 12, 2016 09:57 |
|
So in addition to writing the comedic fantasy (and pun-wallowing) Myth Adventure series (the later books of which were co-written with Jody Lynn Nye of Mythology 101, who also continued the Myth series after her co-writer's death, saying that they had "big plans"), Robert Lynn Asprin wrote a comedic sci-fi military (and pun-wallowing) series called Phule's Company. The basic premise is that an semi-independently-wealthy space military officer by the name of Phule causes some sort of public relations nightmare, and gets reassigned to captain the misfits squad (at which point he assumes the military name of Captain Jester). Said squad includes such multi-dimensional characters as Chocolate Harry, the former-biker quarter-master; Mother, a shy-in-person, brash-over-microphone comm officer; Super Gnat, small but scrappy; Escrima, an angry cook; a Legionnaire of Asian descent who goes by the name of Sushi; Rev, the chaplain for a future/space religion centered on The King (read: Elvis); and Tusk-anini, a wart-hog-looking alien with a taste for classical music. Also the main character's butler, Beeker, prim and self-assured because he can handle every situation. Unlike the Myth Adventures series, this one seems to have ended with Robert Asprin's death in 2008, even though the last four were co-written with Peter J. Heck. I guess audience demand wasn't there for more to be commissioned, since this series started in 1990, compared to the fantasy series' start in 1978 (Myth also had a board game, so hey). I will say that the first two books in the series have their moments, though very lightly written, but going by the Amazon reviews, even the most devoted of Asprin's fans were unhappy once Heck came on-board. Let's break these down, at least a little bit. Phule's Company, 1990. First of the series (duh), sets things up. The military of the main focus is the Space Legion (think French Foreign Legion), which I only mention because part of this one's plot is that Phule's Company goes up against the regular space army (name: Regular Army) for a defense contract. Also introduces the short lizard aliens called Zenobians, with whom Phule creates a business deal outside of his military contract, netting him some extra income. Phule's Paradise, 1992. In this one, Phule's Company gets sent to a casino planet to protect a specific casino from Mafia analogues. In the process, the company has to pose as casino employees, space Yakuza (that is, Yakusa) pop in for a few scenes, and Phule gains another low-effort source of income, though with the twist that the rest of the company gets shares as well. A Phule and His Money, 1999. In this one, Phule's Company gets sent to a planet with guerilla warfare and competing amusement parks. They resolve things in a way that reconciles the rebels and the ruling government, while netting money for Phule and his company. Phule Me Twice, 2000. The Zenobian empire is encountering aggression by an unseen enemy (spoilers, it's nanomachines), so Phule, having previous dealings with the Zenobians, is dispatched to serve as their military advisor. For some reason (to keep his higher-ups in the military second-guessing, I think?), Phule has an android double built, who ends up being instrumental in communicating with the nanobots. Probably leads to Phule gaining more money somehow, I don't remember. No Phule Like An Old Phule, 2004. Something about big game hunters who assume that since the Zenobians are lizards, their planet must have dinosaurs. Phule serves as their host, and "gets on the wrong side of celebrity canine Barky the Environmental Dog". Robots in the resolution, probably? Also, Phule's father shows up. Money at the end? Phule's Errand, 2006. Phule's butler Beeker takes off without explaining why, so that the book can happen instead of ending in two pages. His in-fiction reason for doing so is that he has a relationship with the space-Mafia advisor from the second book, and has a plan to get her out of that servitude after she enlists in the Legion as a medic. Phule goes after him, hopping from planet to planet. Meanwhile, Phule's mean commanding officer visits the planet at which he's supposed to be doing duty, uh-oh! A few excerpts, all pulled from Phule's Paradise. Phule's Paradise posted:Chocolate Harry, the company's massive, pear-shaped supply sergeant, turned his head with regal slowness to survey the Legionnaire who had addressed him through his pop-bottle-thick glasses. One of the few blacks in the company, Harry would be an imposing figure even if he didn't favor a fierce bristly beard to offset his close-cropped hair, or wear his uniform tunic with the sleeves ripped off to display his thick arms, but as it was, the cold stare he leveled was enough to dampen the enthusiasm of his questioner even before he spoke. Phule's Paradise posted:Lex shrugged. "So he's rich. So what?" Phule's Paradise posted:"I gots nowhere to go," Harry said, flashing his teeth. "Is my hawg okay out front there?"
|
# ? Jun 13, 2016 03:09 |
|
"A military exercise... in fun" has to be one of the worst taglines ever. Also even in 92 it wasn't okay to say "the blacks."
|
# ? Jun 13, 2016 05:10 |
|
Those books sounded a little amusing until I got to the excerpts and it became clear where "Chocolate" Harry got his name.
|
# ? Jun 13, 2016 09:42 |
|
Heath posted:Those books sounded a little amusing until I got to the excerpts and it became clear where "Chocolate" Harry got his name. Harry isn't that uncommon
|
# ? Jun 13, 2016 09:48 |
|
That wasn't the one I was referring to.
|
# ? Jun 13, 2016 09:57 |
|
Darthemed posted:
This is the most 90's thing I have seen in a long time. I love it.
|
# ? Jun 13, 2016 12:52 |
|
muscles like this? posted:Also even in 92 it wasn't okay to say "the blacks." There's always something "magical" about science fiction where dozens of alien species pass without comment, but non-white human characters are ~exotic~.
|
# ? Jun 13, 2016 13:40 |
|
Heath posted:That wasn't the one I was referring to.
|
# ? Jun 13, 2016 19:23 |
|
UNITED STATES OF JAPAN We begin in a Japanese-American internment camp! They're being liberated! quote:“Poor Kimiko,” Ruth heard someone say. “Their family was so wealthy and now they’ve taken everything from her.” "The Japanese knew better!" (This is a theme, you see.) quote:The American flag was taken down at Los Angeles City Hall. The Japanese rising sun took its place, enveloping the red, white, and blue in a crimson blaze that melded everything into a hot red ball. It was the 4th of July. The firecrackers that had been prepared to commemorate the holiday were being used to celebrate the fall of Los Angeles. Sparks lit up the air in a graffiti of loss. Paintings of fierce light splattered the sky like blood, only brighter, scintillating in desperation, boding ominously for a dim future. Groups of Americans planned rebellion and dissent. They believed the real fighting would commence after the faux surrender. The Japanese knew better. They were ready for resistance. And introducing our protagonist! quote:There was never a day Beniko Ishimura didn’t think about death. If mortality were a cocktail, it would be bitter, punctuated by hints of lime, imbuing oblivion in short draughts. Ben’s own cocktail was too sweet for his tastes because his date for the evening, Tiffany Kaneko, liked her drinks fruity. She was a striking redhead with freckles that mottled her cheeks. Her green eyes and thin lips could spark incendiaries – the way they’d done the first time their eyes locked. She wore a pink qipao because she appreciated traditional Chinese dresses and the way they emphasized the contrast of her Irish ancestry with her Asian periphery. Even though Ben’s father had been part Chinese and his mother Japanese, he looked full-blooded Japanese. He tried to match the prevailing fashions of the day and aligned his image with the latest trends projected from Tokyo. Like most of the officers in the room, his long hair was slicked back with oil. He wore the brown suit of a military officer, insignia ranking him as a captain in the Imperial Army. Vermilion lapels collided against his chubby cheeks, and, from the bulge in his belly that he refused to acknowledge, it was clear he was fighting both his cravings and gravity. He sucked on an ice cube in his cocktail, relishing the cold that numbed his tongue. I love my highly detailed descriptions of totally mundane technology! We sure can't have anything as ordinary as "mobile phones" in our magical neo-Japan! quote:After he’d exited the performance hall, he took out his portical in its square form and flipped open the flaps to turn it into its familiar triangular shape. Porticals had originally been devised as “portable calculators.” In the decades since the War, they had grown to encompass a phone with visual display, an electronic interface to search information on the kikkai (the digital space where all information was stored), and more. The triangular glass monitor interfaced with the processor, which he navigated via tactile contact. The silver borders accented the sleek design. They have giant robots because Japan! How did they develop this technology? Why is it so much more advanced than in our timeline? Don't worry about that! Let me explain this abbreviation in parenthesis for you instead! quote:The train went above ground. Huge skyscrapers towered in the distance. Mechas – robotic soldiers that were as tall as the skyscrapers – vigilantly guarded the skies against enemies outside and within. His portical was synced with the California Nippon News and a report from Governor Ogasawara gave the annual report on the state of the union. “Crime rates are the lowest in the western hemisphere and pollution is virtually nonexistent,” she stated. This intercut with footage from New Berlin and Hitlerica with their smoggy cities, as their cars still used gasoline, unlike the purely electric vehicles of the USJ. “Our EKS industry,” (Electric Kikkai System), “is booming and, despite attempts by German Minister Goebbels to make New Berlin the portical entertainment capital of the world, Los Angeles still holds the distinction with over a thousand unique depots,” Governor Ogasawara vaunted. Viruses were raiding her entire immune system! quote:Akiko took out her silver gun. “There’s an old American religion that said if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your tongue, cut that out too.” Oh, and we're not even a quarter of the way through yet! Coming up: Gratuitous body horror! quote:They entered a hallway with a convex ceiling, white walls, shallow reflecting pool, and statues of grotesque animals. It resembled a temple with its axial alignments and lilies floating serenely in the water. She was about to comment on the architecture when she noticed something strange. The statues looked real and one of the nude women blinked. It took a few seconds to realize that all the statues were actual people, bound by metallic strips, some with bars perforating their body, wires intertwined with veins and muscles. An emaciated male had a metallic nail sticking out at every junction point in his bones, a tattoo of a black line linking them in a constellation of affliction. A woman’s skin was split up like patchworks, part metal, part flesh, hundreds of squares breaking up her body into a checkerboard. Another was bent backwards, the spine arcing in an impossible three hundred and sixty degree curl, the face held immobile by a larynx substitute and thousands of needles. They were sculptures celebrating the prosthetics of human profligacy. There was an altar at the other end and several columns that led to a corridor. Next to the altar was a tall giraffe with the face of a human and a dog with the body of a man. A woman had the wings and legs of a flamingo. They were hybrid people and the worst part was that, even though their bodies were immobile, their eyes were restlessly skipping. quote:She couldn’t resist the guard putting her hand down into the ant pit. She felt the ants throng her hand. They ate ravenously, thousands piling on top. The smell of her skin was making them greedy. The pain flared and she felt sweat break out over her body. She kept on thinking about her mother washing her hands every evening. She felt ashamed to admit she couldn’t remember a single song on the violin. The pinches were getting more aggressive as the ants cleaved at her fingers. Toilet problems! Also reminiscing about torture! quote:She headed for the lavatory, a private one with only an Eastern-styled toilet in the ground. The lock on the stall door was too hard for her to manipulate so she gave up and squatted above the toilet. Cyborg gun arms that use crystals to fire 'energy beams'! Which have recoil! Why wouldn't you just use a regular prosthetic hand and make it into a gun you can hold instead? Because Japan! quote:Akiko’s eyes went to a particularly lethal-looking cannon that was pitch black, a long corpulent barrel with grooves like fangs. “What’s that?” What was the actual plot about, you ask? I don't remember! There was a subversive video game called "United States of America" and a general who was a traitor, and it was really goddamn boring, drowned in a sea of juvenile grimdark poo poo.
|
# ? Jun 13, 2016 20:23 |
|
help help get it off me
|
# ? Jun 14, 2016 00:11 |
|
I'm about halfway through The Gripping Hand, the sequel to The Mote in God's Eye. Both aren't really bad books, per se, they have some interesting ideas- but the dialogue and interactions between characters are all extremely labored, like the authors were trying to hit a certain word count or something.
|
# ? Jun 16, 2016 19:47 |
|
33-odd pages and nobody's talked about Dreamsbane of Tamalor, the creation of 'wildly creative' individual Bradley James Simpson (and his vanity publisher). I was once part of a newsgroup that he e-mail bombed with the preview and I was so fascinated with its...unique style that I ended up buying it to see where it went (it goes nowhere). Honestly, I've had more entertainment value just by getting other people to read it and observing their reactions, which normally revolve around them throwing it across the room. However, don't just listen to me - check out these great reviews! "Excellent fantsy (sic) world with compelling plot and vivid characters." "This is a wonderful look at the creative powers of the mind. Bradley J Simpson has created characters and a world you will not soon forget. Looking forward to his next book and I highly recommend you stop and read this engaging tale." You can find the preview on Google Books, and my lord you have to check it out. Just flicking through it randomly, we have the following: ""How do I know that ye have the rose?" Longblade quietly whispers secretively." "Wolf, I come from another dimension." Quickly Linda kisses Wolf gingerly on the cheek and hurries off to her own room. Wolf stands there lingering for a long period of time just staring off into nothing as he blushes softly. "This last mountain trail will surely be my last."
|
# ? Jun 16, 2016 23:38 |
|
Oh, that J. G. Eccarius I mentioned upthread? Yeah, I found the publisher excerpts from his books. The Last Days of Christ The Vampire, We Should Have Killed the King. No, no, don't thank me. Also, there's more than one anarchist vampire novel, making it probably a genre now.
|
# ? Jun 16, 2016 23:58 |
|
Mr Toes posted:33-odd pages and nobody's talked about Dreamsbane of Tamalor, the creation of 'wildly creative' individual Bradley James Simpson (and his vanity publisher). I was once part of a newsgroup that he e-mail bombed with the preview and I was so fascinated with its...unique style that I ended up buying it to see where it went (it goes nowhere). Honestly, I've had more entertainment value just by getting other people to read it and observing their reactions, which normally revolve around them throwing it across the room. These quotes are like something from Half Life: Full Life Consequences 'today is a good day to do what has to be done' whispered Wolf secretively and did a backflip longingly into nothing
|
# ? Jun 17, 2016 00:29 |
|
Powerful Two-Hander posted:These quotes are like something from Half Life: Full Life Consequences Actually, that's a pretty accurate assessment. Everything is fully described to at least one level of redundancy ('mutual love for one another' as an example') Unfortunately the preview doesn't include the 'songs', which contain things like rhymes using the same word and the line 'sunlight shines in reverse during night', which is so odd it's stuck in my brain for over a decade. If I can find it, I'm halfway tempted to do a lets read.
|
# ? Jun 17, 2016 10:00 |
|
Darkhold posted:JV Jones definitely isn't for everyone but she is a pretty good author. But if you're going to read her you have to brace yourself for long long descriptions of unpleasant stuff. Gritty doesn't begin to describe how she'll go into weird detail about veins and bladders and sometimes that's just explaining to you how they're making dinner. Yah, I haven't read that series but have been following the one that begins with A Cavern of Black Ice and it's pretty great although she's putting us through a GRRM-like amount of waiting for the next (and final?) book. Six years and counting... (unlike GRRM, though, she doesn't spend all the time blogging about football or whatever, she more or less drops off the surface of the Internet instead.)
|
# ? Jun 17, 2016 12:28 |
|
This isn't 100% on topic but it is related, and it was too good not to share: When Dickens met Dostoevsky by Eric Naiman.
|
# ? Jun 21, 2016 14:25 |
|
Tiggum posted:This isn't 100% on topic but it is related, and it was too good not to share: This was a wild ride from start to finish. Holy poo poo.
|
# ? Jun 22, 2016 03:34 |
|
|
# ? May 9, 2024 09:03 |
|
divabot posted:Oh, that J. G. Eccarius I mentioned upthread? Yeah, I found the publisher excerpts from his books. The Last Days of Christ The Vampire, We Should Have Killed the King. No, no, don't thank me. Also, there's more than one anarchist vampire novel, making it probably a genre now. Hey, that's the same publisher as "My Journey with Aristotle to the Anarchist Utopia," that book I made an effortpost about many pages ago. They're great.
|
# ? Jun 22, 2016 07:47 |